Repeatedly voted against democratic amendments to the rules, amendments that would have allowed specific witness testimony or the production of specific documents. Now, 10 of those 11 democratic amendments were defeated on a party line vote. 53 republicans against, 47 democrats in favor, with one exception, a technical amendment about the time each side would be afforded to respond to a motion when senator Susan Collins of maine broke from her party and voted with the democrats. The defeat of the democratic wish list came at the direction of Senate Majority leader Mitch Mcconnell who changed his own rules at the last minute in order to keep more moderate members of his caucus happy and in line. Joining me now to discuss all of this is conservative attorney george conway. He is also an advisor to the Lincoln Project which is an antitrump super pac. George, thanks for being here, appreciate it. Thank you, jake. Give us your First Impressions of the first day. How do you think the house impeachment managers did . How do you think the president s Defense Attorneys did . Well, i think the managers simply outclassed trumps lawyers. There wasnt any question. The managers were prepared, they were thoughtful, they were factual, they were logical, they were dignified. Trumps lawyers, on the other hand, were dissembling, distorting and even lying. That was one of two distressing aspects i found about yesterdays proceedings. The behavior and the approach taken by trumps counsel. The second is the partyline votes on witnesses. The partyline votes on witnesses. This is a trial. This is a trial where they should want to hear the evidence. If the evidence if everyone is so sure, if theyre so sure that the evidence will exonerate President Trump, then, yeah, lets hear from john bolton. We should hear from pompeo, we should hear from mulvaney. So if youre a republican senator, youre a republican. I guess youre an independent now. If you were a senator, you would have voted to subpoena all the documents from the white house, the pentagon theres no justification not to. When you get to a trial, youre entitled to issue trial subpoenas. Even before that youre even in a criminal case youre entitled to issue pretrial discovery, both sides, even if evidence has been heard before a grand jury. In fact the United States against nixon, the famous case that dealt with executive privilege in 1974 involved pretrial discovery in a criminal case where the defendants had already been indicted. So the analogy would be here is that once you file the indictment or the impeachment charges here, you should get discovery for trial. Mitch mcconnell, the Senate Majority leader, says he doesnt think there should be any witnesses and hes telling his caucus that he doesnt think that should happen at all. The constitution says, article 1 says that the senate has the power to try, sole power and thus the obligation, to try all impeachments. Its their obligation to hear the evidence. And if theres evidence thats not in the record already, they should be going out and allowing the subpoena to be issued in the name of the chief justice of the United States for that evidence. Thats what a trial is. Thats what this is supposed to be for. Their job is to hear the evidence, to hear all of it. Not some of it or none of it, which seems to be the way theyre going. And what do you make of the fact that the republicans have opted to take this stand of no new evidence, no new witnesses, at least at this point . What are they afraid of . What are they afraid of . Theyre going to hear evidence they dont like . They must be afraid of something. And thats the thing that i find most disturbing about it, is they dont want to hear the evidence because they know the truth. They know hes guilty. They dont want to hear the evidence because they dont want the American People to see it too. So i want to talk more about this, but i do want to get your response to some of the arguments we heard yesterday. Heres Pat Cipollone, the white House Counsel, talking about the democrats process. Take a listen. But what happened was the proceedings took place in a basement of the house of representatives. The president was forbidden from attending. The president was not allowed to have a lawyer present in every other impeachment proceeding the president has been given a minimal due process. Nothing here. Not even mr. Schiffs republican colleagues were allowed into the scif. That is the location where they deposed witnesses. I mean that whole sequence was just mendacious and it ended with a falsehood. Its not possible for me to think that he didnt know what the truth was. Three committees, three full committees of the house of representatives were entitled to attend those depositions, and that includes every republican member. There were at least 40 of them at least. And they were given equal time as the democrats. They could question the witnesses if they so chose. The republicans in the house were not hesitant to carry the president s water. So if they had any questions to ask, they should have asked them. And its just amazing to me that cipollone could make this outright false statement that says republicans were not allowed to attending. Its a lie. If you made that assertion in the court and the court caught you on it, it would be the end of you. What do you mean . The court would reprimand you. The court might even refer you to the disciplinary committees. Its outrageous. But because this is a senate trial you know, im not going to speak to what the disciplinary committees could do in this circumstance, but it was it violates your obligation of fair advocacy as a lawyer. So just to be clear, congressman schiff said, when he responded to that, that he wouldnt suggest that cipollone made those false claims deliberately, he said hes mistaken. Youre not willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Thats always the best way in a courtroom or when youre an advocate, when somebody has done something thats totally outrageous, you say im not going im going to let you make that judgment, let the facts speak for themselves and that was a very skillful way that schiff handled it. But it was an outright lie. A flat lie. The rest of the sequence was mendacious as well. He said the president was forbidden from attending, he was not allowed to have a lawyer present. Its mendacious in two respects. At the end of the day, he was entitled to make a presentation before the House Judiciary Committee. His lawyers were invited to do that and cipollone wrote some nasty letter on december 6th saying go pound sand. And secondly, this whole notion of procedural unfairness is just bogus. The house can do whatever it wants in terms of how it decides to impeach a president or any other federal public officer. Its akin to, and im sure that youve heard this said many times, its akin to a grand jury. Nobody gets to come in and present their case before a grand jury. You get that opportunity at the trial. In the senate. And thats where we are today. And now theyre saying we dont want the other side to present evidence. I mean this is just a sham. This is just outrageous that the republicans think they can play this game. And the republicans in the senate are under oath. They take a special oath to render impartial justice. Let me ask you a question, because you are a conservative attorney. You have been prominent in republican legal circles for a long, long time. How do you feel when you see the Republican Party going against these basic rules that you consider to be important . Im deeply saddened. Its very upsetting. And this is a moment i think of reckoning. Not just for the country and for the rule of law and for the constitution. Its a very specific day of reckoning for the republican senators who took this oath and the Republican Party generally. Are they going to stand for lies instead of truth . Are they going to stand for gaslighting instead of reality . Are they going to just do the bidding of this one man and put his interests over those of the country . Thats what this is about. And it was just distressing to see a complete unwillingness of the republican senators to vote for hearing evidence, vote for receiving evidence. It should have been there should have been no question about it. Its not like that there was the house managers put on some spectacular statistics about how the average impeachment trial has 33 witnesses. Thats a trial. Now, the clinton case was a bit of an outlier because of the incredibly complete record that was gathered before the grand jury. By ken starr. By ken starr. You know, it was a very, very narrow set of facts that were at issue and also both sides agreed they didnt want too much of live testimony because of the salacious nature of it. That was a completely different circumstance. But even there, they had witnesses. They took depositions. So here where its a much, much more serious charge, i mean the clinton thing is bad for a president and terrible you supported the impeachment of president clinton . I probably did things that caused the impeachment of president clinton. And he you know, he lied under oath, but it was in a civil case that had nothing to do with the powers of his office. It had to do with what happened in a hotel room three years before he became president no, two years before he became president. And it didnt involve abuse of president ial power. It didnt involve withholding hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funds to an ally at war just because you want to get he wanted to get a foreign country to announce a bogus investigation against his leading political rival. I mean it should be it should be a nobrainer here. Lets talk about the charges against President Trump, because jay sekulow, another one of the president s attorneys, last night and youre forgiven if you went to sleep before this happened because the trial lasted until almost 2 00 a. M. In the morning. But sekulow tried to compare President Trump withholding the security aid to ukraine with something that president obama did. I actually watched that. That was at 7 00, i saw that. Let me run this sound from jay sekulow, President Trumps attorney. Its interesting to note that the Obama Administration withheld 585 million of promised aid to egypt in 2013. But the administrations public message was that the money was not officially on hold. Sounds like this may be a practice of a number of administrations. To be clear, im not sure what hes talking about with the administrations public message. You see New York Times stories informed by the administration where they are saying they were using that money as leverage because there had been a coup in egypt and general sisi. And they did it with congress knowing about it and they followed the procedures. Right. Thats the whole point. This is mendacious. This is deceptive and distortive. Whats at issue here is not whether the president can if he follows the right procedures, which the gao said he did not follow here. The question is not whether the president can sometimes impound or withhold funds, the question is why he did it. If he did it for a legitimate reason like all of a sudden ukraine switched sides and became a russian satellite, well then, yeah, absolutely. If theyre not going to fight the russians, why would you be giving them aid. That would be a perfectly legitimate reason to say im going to withhold this money and youd have to send a message to the relevant committees in congress. There are procedures for that. And just say we shouldnt spend this money anymore. Thats not what happened here. He just cut it off 91 minutes after he made this outrageous demand of president zelensky. Thats the difference. The depth to which trumps lawyers will go to make these deceptive arguments, i mean theyre treating the American Public, theyre treating the senate like theyre morons. Its just outrageous. One of the other things that seems clear in terms of how different it is from the clinton defense is that even clintons president clintons attorney, charles ruff, condemned what president clinton did, called it morally wrong. This is after months and months of bill clinton lying and deceiving. Im not trying to defendi president clinton. But at this point president clinton was publicly contrite and his defenders were saying it was wrong. Wrong but not impeachable. Take a rislisten to what President Trumps defenders are saying, is what President Trump said, it was a perfect call, check the transcript. Here is one of his attorneys last night. Youve seen the transcripts which the president released transparently, unprecedentedly. There was no quid pro quo for anything. Just utterly and completely shameless in light of all of the evidence. And the notion that you can assert that the call as the president has been doing as perfect is crazy. And even the one one lawyer, the one law professor who defended the House Republicans position before the House Judiciary Committee said this morning in an oped in the Washington Post theres no way you can say that call was perfect. And it wasnt. And what you saw that lawyer just do is just ignoring the evidence, ignoring the call that david holmes heard in the kiev restaurant between bill clinton and Gordon Sondland. Donald trump and Gordon Sondland. Im sorry, donald trump and Gordon Sondland, yes, sorry. Where you could hear, and you can. I can personally attest you can hear trump when hes on the phone with somebody sitting next to you. Hes got a big, booming voice. Yes. And he says are they going to do the investigations . Thats all he cared about. Holmes asked sondland, well, does the president care about ukraine . Basically he doesnt give an expletive deleted about ukraine, sondland said, he only cares about the big things, the things that affect him personally. Thats what this is about. Thats what makes this offense, what he did impeachable is he wasnt concerned about the interests of the nation. The interests of the nation were clearly in favor of letting that aid go unrestricted. He did it because it was a Pressure Point to get these guys in ukraine to do his bidding to help him get reelected. You just alluded to the fact that youve heard President Trump on the phone so let me just acknowledge to our viewers that obviously you are Kellyanne Conways husband. She is a counselor to President Trump. And youve already said i dont think you have to be the spouse of a Senior Administration official to know that hes loud on the phone. Im sure many, many people and cnn probably know that too. Yes, of course. I can personally attest thats true. But i will also just say that is not a subject you want to talk about so im not not particularly. I think my views about President Trump and his administration can stand on their own. Right. I just want to make clear to our viewers thats why im not asking about it. Last night we saw chief Justice Roberts admonish both sides, not just the republicans, for their heightened rhetoric. Lets play a little bit from before that. Its about time we bring this power trip in for a landing. President trump is a man of his word. He made promises to the American People and he delivered. Over and over and over again. Its a farce. And it should end. Mr. Nadler, you owe an apology to the president of the United States and his family. Now, i guess my question is, i know that President Trump will like that clip. Right. But will it work on any senators, mitt romney, Susan Collins, lamar alexander, cory gardner, whomever, martha mcsally, who might be vacillating on this . Will it offend anybody . I mean if you did that in a courtroom, you would verge on being held in contempt. The judge would ask the jury to leave the room and the judge would ream you out. I would hope that republican senators who like all senators generally value decorum in the worlds greatest deliberative body would find that offensive, because it was offensive. It was offensive not just because there was a personal attack on counsel for the other side, the managers, but because this assertion that the president is truthful is beyond belief. Heres a man with 16,200 lies documented in this towns major newspaper. He continually hes incapable, virtually incapable of telling the truth about anything, even when its helpful to him. Hes a pathological liar. We have a lawyer standing up before the senate saying hes truthful. Hes a man of his word. I mean thats just absurd. It wasnt only cipollone who offended chief Justice Roberts. Heres a little comment from jerry nadler who cipollone was referring to. So far ive seen every republican senator has shown that they want to be part of the coverup. Either you want the truth or you and you must permit the witnesses or you want a shameful coverup. History will judge. A, do you agree with what hes saying and, b, was it a mistake to say it . I agree with what hes saying, the substance of it. I mean republican senators need to look themselves in the mirror and look themselves in the mirror and think what its going to be like five years from now, ten years, what their legacies are going to be and the fact that this evidence is going to keep coming out. Truth has a way of coming out. Weve seen it with the foia requests that have produced these documents that are quite interesting. New documents came out last night. Last night. Were going to get books from peo